


Goodbye to a World

by hmmwatt



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst and Feels, Drew Monson (mentioned), Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Morgan Adams (mentioned), Not Happy, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Relationship, Ryland Adams (mentioned) - Freeform, Scientist and his android, Shane Dawson (mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 11:10:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16345589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hmmwatt/pseuds/hmmwatt
Summary: [100%][AI activated]He was met with absolute white when he opened his eyes.So he was born.





	Goodbye to a World

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from Porter Robinson—Goodbye to a World ( youtu.be/W2TE0DjdNqI )  
> it’d be nice to listen to it while you read.
> 
> and just a warning, this story will be sad.

 

  
**[System booting . . . 63%]**  
**[Loading tactile driver]**  
**[Loading auditory driver]**  
**[Finishing visual driver]**

**[86%]**  
**[Finishing initial knowledge database]**  
**[Loading default character traits]**

**[97%]**  
**[Checking memory status]**

**[100%]**  
**[AI activated]**

   
He was met with absolute white when he opened his eyes.

He blinked for a while and moved his fingers experimentally.   **[System initialized] [Hello World]**   Small panels in his sight pinged. So he was born.

He rose from the stiff bed and looked around. The room was cold and rather empty except for the bed he was currently sitting on. He saw a human on a foldable chair, precariously leaning to one side, asleep. He saw the mess of brown hair, sticking out in every direction, and a pair of thin-rimmed glasses dangling from his nose. He slowly reached out, fixed the glasses, and tapped his shoulder.

The human jolted awake, then stared at him with wild eyes as if still in a dream. His eyes glistened in the harsh white light.

“Hello,” he spoke for the first time.  
“Hi,” the human answered.

 

* * *

 

He was first given clothes, a loose shirt and a pair of pants that were a bit too big for him. The human apologized for not having better sense in fashion, but he wouldn’t have minded whatever it was. He was new to these things, after all.

The human took him around the place they were in, despite him already having the entire building’s blueprint uploaded in his mind. The bunker, he called it. There was the laboratory to the left wing; the white room he woke up a part of it. There was the “main” room in the middle, with many things cluttered around a rather old, shabby sofa. There was the right wing, with quite a few rooms lining the corridor—he was let into one of them, told it was his own.

His room was a small—cozy, the word pinged up from his database—space that contained everything he did and did not need. He didn’t necessarily need a bed, for example. Androids did not sleep. He did, however, appreciate the soft feel of the blankets. He told the human exactly these thoughts, and earned a bright laugh and a pat on the head.

He recognized the human, according to preset input, as Doctor Garrett Watts. The human asked to just call him Garrett.

As for himself, Garrett called him Andrew. So he was named.

 

* * *

 

The current world, Andrew knew, was very different from what information he had. “Yeah, sorry about that,” Garrett muttered ruefully. “That thing was last updated in 2049, I think.”

The world of 2049, according to the database, had already suffered badly. After series of corrupt powers and failed global policies, rapid climate change caused steep decline in production of all areas, hitting agriculture especially hard. Lack of resources meant the entire world was teeming with barely-contained frenzy, one wrong move away from all-out war. Then multiple natural catastrophes swept unprepared nations.

“It’s far worse since then,” Garrett spoke sadly. Andrew found that he did not enjoy seeing those gloomy downturn of his brows. “The storms, I mean. That’s why we’re just stuck here in the bunker. It’s a shame, Andrew, I’d have liked to show you so much more.”

Garrett did take him up to the well-guarded gate of the bunker, just once. They were both wearing thick hazmat suits—which Andrew did not understand, he was an android—and Garrett opened the gates, one minute. Warm, thick smoke rushed through the gap, but there was nothing out there. Andrew squinted. There was nothing. The ground was ashen, the sky complete darkness. Only dust and radiation roamed the barren land. Garrett closed the gates again, and turned on the ventilation system of the small gateway.

“So now you know,” he laughed in tight sounds. Andrew nodded in silence, and catalogued the image in his database.

 

Yet their life in the bunker was separate, safe. Normal, he could even say, from what he perceived from the database. At night Garrett slept, while Andrew went into conservation mode (Garrett insisted he make use of the bed somehow.) They woke up when it was morning according to the clock. For meals, Andrew did not eat, so it was usually just Garrett eating out of cans and complaining how gross it was.

“It is precious sustenance,” Andrew pointed out. “It has kept you alive for this long.”  
“Well, yeah,” Garrett mulled over that idea. “Still, it doesn’t mean whining is forbidden. They could have made this taste just a bit better, you know!”

During the many spare hours they had in-between, they talked—which was mostly Andrew asking questions and Garrett providing anecdotes. Garrett seemed to have an endless supply of things he wanted to tell Andrew. He brought out books about anything and everything. He set out movies for him to watch alone or together. They even tried a hand at video games (Andrew beat him in most of them.) Through it all, Andrew got used to the way Garrett laughed, high and bubbly, a contagious burst of joy. He learned from the human what to feel, how to feel. And it set something free in him from the plastic and gears he knew he was.

Garrett seemed to have no boundaries in what he was willing to teach an android. So Andrew grew, mentally and emotionally, in a world that was already well on its way to demise.

“Did you create me because you were alone?” Andrew asked once.  
“I, well,” Garrett started, then looked down. Shame, Andrew realized. “It was a little more than that.”

 

* * *

 

“I am fully capable of helping out, whatever research it is you’re doing,” Andrew spoke in tight tones, frustrated. “I am an android. Remember?”

“You’re here with me. That’s all I ever need,” Garrett smiled that bright smile, smoothing down his hair. Andrew bit his lip.

If he was not goofing off and laughing with Andrew, Garrett tended to hole himself up in the laboratory, doing what—Andrew did not know, he didn’t exactly share. And it had him frustrated. He knew he could be of help, he had learned, was learning so much since his awakening. Yet to Garrett, all he seemed to be was a companion for leisure, simple conversations only. He wanted more, unsure of what, but more.

Pushed for anything to help with, Andrew started with organizing the bunker piece by piece. He picked up the laundry, cleared the sofa, arranged the scattered books, and started tackling the many dusty, old corners of the bunker.

Then came the day he entered Garrett’s room. It wasn’t that he was forbidden from it, really, but some vague sense of privacy—learned from his database—had kept him at bay. Yet now he had a clear motive, which was cleaning up the mess Garrett was prone to leave in his wake. He made the bed, smiled at the mess of patterned shirts on the floor, and cleared away some empty cans tumbling about. Soon he started snooping into things a bit further, curiosity overcoming him.

He found an old image—a polaroid, his database told him—tucked carefully into the corner of the bedside drawer. It was one from the old world, before the storms. Most of the people were strangers to him, but the photograph practically spilled over with warmth. A man with long dark locks and thick glasses gave a lazy smile while a young woman with sunglasses over her pale hair grinned. A thin man with pointy teeth had a similar grin, looking up at another man with messy, ruddy hair and smiling eyes. There was Garrett among all these happy-looking people, captured while he burst into laughs.

There was a man leaning on Garrett’s shoulder, he too caught mid-laugh. That man—it was his own face in the photograph.

 

Andrew quietly placed the polaroid back in the drawer. Barely registering his actions, he mechanically hung up some more clothes, smoothed the wrinkles on the sheets, then left the room. As the door closed behind him, he rushed into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror.

He knew full well what he looked like. Rounded face, reddish hair, slightly curvy. Dark brown eyes. A slight stubble that never grew, so that it just stayed there, serving no function at all. Familiar facial structure, familiar body.

Yet before today, he did not know whom his appearance was based on.

In a fit of malfunction, he grasped at the mirror and shattered it under his hand. He was mere plastic and gears, after all. He was nobody.

“Andrew!” Garrett heard the noise and hurriedly entered the bathroom. Andrew met the panicked gaze. “Oh god, are you okay?”  
“I’m okay.” Andrew answered, calmly. “I do not feel pain, Garrett. You know that.”

Garrett just stood there, staring. Andrew pushed past him, his torn plastic hand numb, but his main component flaring with unknown hurt.

He kept his distance from the human, a chilled silence. He could read the pain in his eyes, yet he did not know how to bridge it.

 

* * *

 

The other rooms belonged to those who had gone.

Andrew found Garrett stumbling into the main room, a bottle in his hand. He was alarmed to find that the bottle contained alcohol.

“Yeah, y’know,” Garrett slurred. “Something special I saved up, especially for special occasions—did I say it was special?” He giggled at his own incoherence. Despite the distance they had kept until then, Andrew carefully supported his tall frame and laid him out on the sofa, removing the bottle from his grasp.

“I know I need to,” Garrett murmured in his lap. “I know I need to tell you what happened. And I know I probably can’t, not in all my sanity, not that I have much of that left, but—” Andrew calmly patted his back and listened. Garrett suddenly sat up, tugged at his hand. “Let’s go. I’ll show you.”

They went down the right wing, rooms lining the corridor. It was the first time, Andrew realized, that he would see the doors opened.

 

The first room had belonged to Drew.

He was a scientist of fine qualities, sharp intuition and attention to logical detail being his strong points, and above all, a quick biting wit. He had warned of the coming catastrophe for a long time, yet nobody listened. Well, nobody in power, that is. His fellow researchers knew it’d be soon. Drew conceived the idea for, planned, and built the bunkers across the country—the one they were in was the first. Many people were saved thanks to him. Yet he knew he could not stay here. He left to warn more, to save more. He left this bunker behind to Garrett for caretaking and further work.

The room was carefully cleaned and left with barely no trace, ready for whoever that may need the room more than him.

 

The second had belonged to Morgan.

She was a young researcher and activist, new to the field but already of great standing. Despite her self-deprecating jokes, her core belief stood firmly with humanity and its strength. Her researches were fieldwork-oriented, and she was not going to let the storms stop her now—not while there were her companions struggling, still out in the land. She left the bunker to act out her conviction, and Garrett couldn’t persuade her otherwise. He believed in her, would continue to believe in her, wherever she was headed.

The room still had vibrant colours painted on the wall, accidental coffee stains on the floor—it somehow seemed brighter than the others.

 

The third had belonged to Shane and Ryland.

Shane was Garrett’s old friend; Ryland was Morgan’s brother. They were also brilliant researchers, but before that, they were lovers. The catastrophe was devastating, but they had each other. They could not, however, ignore the ever approaching storm—they could not bear the thought of being torn apart. Before all communications were finally cut off from the hurricanes, there were talks of a cryo-technology developed in one of the other bunkers. They knew they had to leave soon. They set out hand in hand.

The room was calm, if lonely, emptied of the love that it once held—but that love had found a different nest, it was nothing to be sad about.

 

The fourth—Andrew knew what was coming before Garrett even spoke.  
“Andrew,” he said quietly. Garrett leaned heavily on him, smelling of alcohol, pressing into his shoulder.

“I couldn’t leave.” Garrett whispered. “While he’s here—while I still remember him here, I couldn’t let it be.” Andrew felt a shudder run through the human’s body, then the wetness spread onto his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I missed him. I missed you so much. I’m so, so sorry.”

 

In the end, Garrett couldn’t tell him what happened. The fourth door remained closed.

 

* * *

 

Andrew stayed seated on the sofa through the night, caressing Garrett’s hair while his tears fell silently, while his swallowed sobs deepened into slow breathing, while he slept fitfully in Andrew’s lap.

His internal clock told him it was morning. Garrett turned in his sleep, facing up. Andrew looked down wonderingly at this man that had given him a name, a place, a chance for his thoughts, his feelings. This human who walked with so much pain in his heart, yet gave him a smile. This human that was the only being in his short existence.

Andrew caressed his damp cheeks. He leaned down and pressed his lips on the slightly open mouth, a brief touch.

Bright heat seemed to run through his circuits, frying all coherent process. All he could feel was the man, pliant under his lips. Bleary, blue eyes looked up at him. A tear slipped from the corner, dropped soundlessly onto the sofa.

“I love you,” Andrew finally spoke.

“I—” Garrett’s breath hitched. “I love you, too.”

Andrew hugged him tight, not caring that his plastic arms might hurt the man. So he was made somebody, even if he could never be of flesh and blood.

 

* * *

 

Garrett’s research turned out to be monitoring the outside world, examining the pollution rate and mapping the course of the storms. Andrew wondered if he was waiting for those who had gone, waiting till they could return. He did not say anything, however, and simply helped him with the day-to-day observations. There was not much they could do, after all. The situation outside the bunker was deteriorating faster than expected.

Still, their life in the bunker continued, now with added warmth. Garrett looked at him wonderingly, and it filled Andrew with something unutterable that he could place such expression in the human. They stole glances, leaned on each other’s shoulder, held hands—and sometimes, they kissed.

And they were happy.

 

 

* * *

 

Time passed. Andrew noticed that Garrett was looking more and more tired. He was paler, eyes rimmed red behind his glasses. His hands were cool to the touch, even when the bunker was kept at a comfortably warm temperature. He started spending longer hours in the lab—and suddenly, Andrew was shut out again. He stood confused, hovering at the mouth of the left wing. Then he returned to his room, now doing a different research of his own, on the human.

He did not have much to go on with, but he formed a hypothesis after a while. Garrett was sick.

Finding a solution to his hypothesis was a different matter. He could run a self-diagnosis, fix messy chunks of his program himself if he needed to, or he could ask Garrett. What he did not know was how a human body should fix itself—especially an unwilling body. Garrett was now avoiding him and his intent watch. Andrew fretted, not knowing what to do.

Then Andrew caught Garrett in the bathroom, coughing out clumps of blood over the sink.

 

It was red, awfully so, a wrong kind of red that made his entire body feel numb. Garrett looked back at Andrew though the mirror, panic-stricken. Quickly he tried to wash himself, but Andrew was quicker. He grabbed Garrett by the wrist and turned him around in a single motion. Garrett winced, trying to pull away.

“What is this?” Andrew felt his hands tremble with rage, with fear. “What are you hiding from me?” Garrett stared at him with wide eyes, shivering. Andrew noticed but did not move away, trapping him against the sink.

He tried to speak, and instead, coughed again. Andrew touched his lips, felt the red come away on his fingers. He could see his own face in the mirror, grimacing strangely. On a human he would have said the face was crying.

 

* * *

 

“I have a question,” Andrew calmly let out the words. Garrett, swaddled in blankets, looked up from his barely-touched can of food. His body was stable for now.

“How did Andrew die?”

The words hung in the air, a palpable, approaching thought. Garrett was too quiet. “Please,” Andrew whispered.  
There was no point in secrets now. Both of them knew. He sighed and, reluctantly, began.

 

* * *

 

The storms were a catastrophe, especially so as it uprooted and transferred everything within its range. This meant that cities were destroyed, lands were upturned and flooded—but also meant that when nuclear wars began, radiation was everywhere, swallowed up into the storm and raining down across nations. Whatever land that was not directly affected by warfare was rendered desolate by hurricanes of unseen scale. And among all the chaos, polluted environment had set out a string of unknown epidemics around the globe. Radiation was just the cherry on top.

The people of the bunker were as well prepared as they could. It did not mean they were fail-proof. Hazard suits did not always work. Air and water were not guaranteed to be pure. Yet they could not always stay in the bunker—they were people of knowledge, they should not ignore what was happening outside.

More and more news of strange sicknesses were heard over communications of the bunker. Andrew hid it well, until he couldn’t anymore.

Andrew was an old friend. He considered himself an observer rather than a scientist—and indeed, people turned to him for a vision of truth. His photographs, films, and calm, careful words had helped many before and after the storm. And he considered it his role to document what was happening, even if it were the literal end of the world. He was one of those who wandered outside the bunker the most, filling cards after cards of memory with images of dust, ashes, and approaching darkness.

Andrew was something more than a friend. At the wake of the storm, they held each other in the bunker as the winds rattled outside. They had known each other, and though their hearts were pained with what was to come, they were together. They loved, facing the end of the world. And they were happy.

It terrified Garrett when Andrew would leave the bunker, camera in hand. He begged to not go, or at least have him accompany the journey, but Andrew laughed and simply said he’d be back soon. Garrett was secretly glad when he stopped venturing out one day.

 

It terrified Garrett when he found Andrew collapsed in the bathroom, blood from his lips.

“It’s okay,” Andrew said with a pale smile. Garrett could never believe it for a second. How was anything okay? There was no time. His condition was deteriorating fast, and there was nothing Garrett could do except sit next to his bed, trying not to cry, biting his own lip till it bled.

One night, when the storm was silent for a brief moment, he was gone. Garrett held him till morning.

It was a small burial, one they knew would be soon lost in the continuing storm. There was not much else they could afford to do. Shane and Ryland left the bunker soon after Andrew’s passing. They asked, pleaded for Garrett to go as well, but he refused. He just couldn’t leave.

Now truly alone, Garrett wandered the bunker like a ghost. He thought never to enter Andrew’s room again—until one night, in a drunk stupor, he stumbled in, expecting warmth that would not be there. Instead, he found blueprints carefully tucked into one of the drawers.

It took Garrett a long, very long time to finish what Andrew started.  
It was only after Andrew—the android, woke up, that Garrett realized he was falling sick as well.

 

“I thought I could solve it,” Garrett murmured, head in his hands. “I didn’t think it would develop this fast, and I was hoping I could find a cure, or the storms would dissipate, somehow.”

Andrew sat quietly, numb.

“I don’t want to leave you alone, Andrew. I didn’t want you even thinking about it.”

 

* * *

 

Garrett grew weaker.

His hands were colder to the touch, his face was so gaunt and pale now. Andrew had no warmth of his own to offer, and his internal gears creaked in bitterness.

Instead of Garrett, who got tired easily and was now sleeping longer hours, Andrew toiled in the laboratory. He burned into memory all the research Garrett had done up to this point. He went so far back as to look at Andrew’s—the human’s works. He sat in the pale lab while Garrett was most likely asleep out there on the sofa. The blue glow of the holographic screen showered his face, but his eyes were unseeing. There was no cure—and if there was, there was not enough time.

Garrett tried to remain as bright and bubbly as he had been. Hanging over the toilet bowl, he joked about still hating those canned food. Andrew couldn’t smile. It was his eleventh time throwing up after his meal. He could barely swallow now.

Time passed, sluggishly, surely. Garrett grew weaker. There was nothing he could do.

 

* * *

 

When the moment came, Garrett knew. Andrew also knew, though he did not want to admit it. Garrett lay in his bed, his breath jagged and hitching. Andrew knelt next to him, silent, lost.

“Thank you, Andrew,” Garrett whispered as he held his hand. “Thanks for staying with me.”  
Where would I go? Andrew wondered to himself. Where could I go, without you?

“And I’m sorry,” Andrew could feel Garrett pressing their hands together, as weakened as his grip was. “I’m sorry that I pushed you to be what you did not choose to be.”  
You made me somebody, Andrew thought. You have given me meaning.

“But now, I need you to,” Garrett breathed out heavily, “need you to get out there, find other bunkers. There’s nothing for you here.”

Andrew stared, unable to speak. Garrett went on, struggling.

“There should be others, somewhere. Drew, Morgan, Ryland, Shane—I believe in them. You need to—I’ve held you here long enough, Andrew.” Garrett coughed, a wet sound. It broke something in Andrew to hear it. “Definitely take the hazmat suit, but you’ll be alright, you’re at advantage.” He tried to pull his lips into a smile. “You should go on living.”

“Please, don’t,” Andrew shook his head. Garrett raised his arms slowly, held the grimacing face in shaking hands.

“I love you,” it was barely a whisper, a wisp of breath. “I loved you, and I will. Always.”

 

Tired, he let his arms fall on the bed. Andrew held his frail body through the hour.

It was quiet.

 

* * *

 

“I love you too,” Andrew pressed his lips lightly on the human’s brows and whispered back. He knew there was no one left that would hear him. “And I’m sorry.”

He blinked briefly, and warning panels filled his sight.

**[A complete system shutdown erases all data, and cannot be reverted.]**  
**[Every AI memory will be lost.]**  
**[Researcher supervision is strongly advised.]**

**[Initiate system shutdown?] [y/n]**

Andrew breathed in, a breath he did not need.

**[y]**

It was done, then.

 

**[Erasing all data . . . 10%]**

**[32%]**  
**[47%]**

 

Through rapidly increasing numbers, he watched the human’s face, trying to carve it into his disintegrating memory. Static filled the edges of his vision. Slowly, his surroundings were disappearing in his mind, all but the body he held in his arms.

He would not be left alone, nor would have the human leave alone.

The end of the world was at hand.

 

**[85%]**  
**[Auditory driver shutdown imminent]**  
**[Tactile driver shutdown imminent]**

**[98%]**  
**[Visual driver shutdown imminent]**

 

He traced the human’s face, feeling nothing in his fingers now, and closed his eyes. He saw white, silent, absolute. So he was—

 

**[100%]**  
**[System shutdown complete]**

 

**[Goodbye]**

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you,  
> I’ll say goodbye soon  
> though it’s the end of the world  
> don’t blame yourself
> 
> and if it’s true  
> I will surround you  
> and give life to a world  
> that’s our own
> 
> Porter Robinson—Goodbye to a World
> 
>  
> 
> why do i keep thinking about character deaths? this is an actual problem.  
> still, i hope you enjoyed that. thanks for reading.


End file.
